


Dante's Espresso

by muldezgron



Category: Drag-On Dragoon | Drakengard, Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Canon Optional, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Hell, Implied/Referenced Karens, No Flower in the After Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27942389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muldezgron/pseuds/muldezgron
Summary: The first ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell used to involve murderers being immersed in a river of boiling blood and fire. At some point, Corporate decided running a coffee shop was a better option. Blood, coffee—same difference, right?
Kudos: 3





	Dante's Espresso

**Author's Note:**

> Technically this story was done 11/24, but I am terrible about sitting on a story like a chicken on an egg because I don't know how to tag it, it's in some way Imperfect, etc.
> 
> Title courtesy of [Eidolon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eidolon). They've saved you all from the Worst Title Ever, believe me.

The manager was an ophanim. Well, okay, strictly speaking “an ophan”, a many-eyed one; the point was that she was a great big wheel of fire covered in eyes. At one point she’d been a wheel of the Merkabah, the Heavenly Chariot, burning with the fires of righteousness. That was incompatible with the dress code, of course, so on the job she had to burn with either standard or business casual hellfire. Everyone agreed it was a load of bullshit. Dress code didn’t allow cornrows, either. Not professional enough, they said. As above, so below.

Her name was the sound of a hundred thunderclaps shattering the heavens. No one could pronounce it right, though, so she told them to just call her Ophie.

It was a small consolation to Rose, staring down a long line of short bobs with frosted tips, that when they inevitably demanded to see the manager, a flaming wheel was going to have to roll out from the back room and stare them down with a quite frankly excessive number of eyes. It didn’t stop them from insisting that Rose should have known they wanted skim milk, not whole, when they had never actually _said anything_ using their words, but it was a satisfying sight all the same.

Rose had to hold back a wince when a man stepped up to the till. He hadn’t done anything yet, but it was an automatic reaction. Soon, any time now, there would be the awkward flirting, because that’s definitely what she was there for. Not for preparing complicated yet terrible coffee orders—there always had to be something wrong with it, that was a direct order from Corporate—no, definitely for being Pointedly Asked what she was doing later, as if the answer was going to be something other than “oh, the usual, burning in a lake of fire for an indeterminate period of time without the sweet release of death, how about you”.

“I’ll have a small coffee,” said the man, staring at the counter.

She blinked at him. “A coffee?”

“Just a coffee, yes,” he said.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any coffee,” she said.

He looked up at her at this, his brows lightly pinched together. “You’re a coffeeshop.”

“Yes,” said Rose, “but we’re also in Hell.”

Some of the more trigger happy customers would already be demanding Ophie’s grand entrance. This man just sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

“Right, yes, of course.” He squinted past his own hand at the chalkboard behind her. Even if he could read Enochian, it wasn’t going to help him much, but he still seemed to give it a solid try.

“There’s always a long black,” Rose suggested.

His eyes moved from the board to her face, staring blankly.

“Also called an Americano,” she added.

“Oh! Oh, right, yes, that’s when you mix the—” He started making small, frustrated hand gestures, as if groping for the words would somehow summon them in whatever passed for his posthumous brain.

“When you mix espresso and hot water, yes.” She felt a little bad for him; lethologica tended to be a curse placed on the sharpest of mass murderers, like a ball and chain clamped to the ankle of an Olympic runner. “It’s not exactly the same as brewed coffee, but it’s close enough.”

He nodded, relief sliding across his face. “Yes, that’s fine.”

He pulled out his wallet as Rose began to input his order into the point of service touchscreen. As expected, “Caffè Americano” could not be found buried in the depths of any of the usual nested menus. She ended up having to charge it as an espresso shot and a cup of tea, separately. “A cup of tea is usually just charging for hot water and a tea bag,” she said.

“That’s fine,” he said, as he started to feed a debit card into the bottom of the card reader.

“Wait—”

He paused and gave her a puzzled look.

“Sorry,” said Rose, “the chip reader’s out of order. You’ll have to swipe it.”

“Oh! Thank you.” He turned the card around and swiped it along the side. The card reader made an irritated beep, not unlike an electronic belch.

“Maybe try it a little slower,” she said. “It’s very finicky.”

He let out a short puff of breath and slid the card through again, at a very slow and steady pace. The card reader made another 8-bit burp in his direction.

“It’s telling me I need to use the chip reader,” he said, crinkling his forehead.

“ _Oh_ ,” said Rose, a realization dawning on her. “Is it Bank of Asmodeus?”

The man turned his card around and held it in both hands, looking at it. “I think it is, yeah.”

“They’re chip only,” she said. “And the chip reader’s broken, so…”

He stared at his card with a look of the purest irritation. “Why even bother having a magnetic strip if it’s chip only?”

Rose shrugged.

The man put his card back in his wallet and pulled out a hundred baaler bill.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “we can only take bills of twenty baalers or less.”

He stared at her in bewilderment. “This is the lowest denomination the machine will give me.”

“I know,” Rose said, smiling sadly. “I’m sorry.”

Here, she could see the frustration building his face, though he did not look her in the eyes. Any minute now, he was going to demand to see the manager.

Then, just as quickly as it had risen, the frustration left him, and he deflated like a kiddie pool with a tear in it.

“I don’t know what else I should have expected from this place,” he said, wearily. “I never even believed in it before I got here.”

“That’s the way it is for a lot of people,” she said. “If it helps, it doesn’t seem like knowing in advance makes much of a difference in the end.”

“I suppose not,” said the man. “Sorry about wasting your time.”

Rose’s eyes looked him up and down in careful assessment. His hands were resting on the counter top, wallet loosely held in one hand. He wore a white cotton oxford with a couple of ballpoint pens in the shirt pocket. He looked down and did not make eye contact.

“Hang on,” she said. “There’s one more thing I’d like to try.”

She tapped on the display button for a cash payment, and the register popped open. The man watched as Rose reached into the tip jar, removed a five baaler bill, and slapped it into the tray as payment.

“Are you allowed to do that?” he asked.

“Nobody actually tips around here,” replied Rose, as she took the “change” from the drawer and dropped it into the jar. “Besides, what are they going to do? Fire me?”

That one managed to get him to crack something like a lopsided smile. His eyes settled on the jar for a moment. He opened his wallet again, took out the hundred baaler bill, and shoved it in the jar.

“I’m a statistical outlier,” he explained, in response to her wide-eyed stare. “If you average it out instead of using the median, you now have some profoundly abysmal tips instead of none.”

“I have no idea what that means,” she said, “but thank you. What’s your name?”

He blinked at her. “Hm?”

“Your name,” said Rose, the sharpie marker already in her hand. “For the cup?”

“Oh! Yes, that’s right. The cup.” He looked off to the side, giving this a lot more thought than most people did. “I suppose you can just put a G on it.”

An Americano was, thankfully, a very simple drink to make compared to a latte or a cappuccino. It was just one shot of espresso and hot water to the “room for cream” level in a sixteen ounce cup. Small was twelve ounces, of course, but at this point, Rose was already in for a penny, in for a pound.

When she put the lid on it and called for “G”, she looked at the cup and had a moment of extreme confusion. The G she had written on it was there, but it had somehow lost its crossbar, turning into a C. In addition, several more letters had been added in handwriting that was not hers, spelling out a five-letter name.

“I don’t know how that happened,” said Rose, as she handed “G” his coffee.

He turned the cup and looked at the name written on it. His expression was indiscernible, though definitely not happy.

“Of course that would happen here,” he said, seemingly directed at the cup. “Of course it would.”

“Sorry,” said Rose, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for. “Cream and sugar is over that way, it’s kind of tucked around a weird corner. Also, it’s not cream and sugar, exactly, it’s non-dairy creamer and saccharine.”

“The little pink packets?” he asked, still not looking up from the name on his cup.

“Yes, the pink ones.”

He nodded and started to turn to leave.

“Hey,” said Rose. “Before you go—”

“G” stopped and looked back at her, mild confusion on his face.

“I hope it’s not too rude to ask,” she said, “but what did you do?” She leaned on the counter as she spoke, resting her face in one hand. “You seem like such a nice person, honestly, it’s hard to imagine you have a kill count of over ten thousand.”

“I’m not a nice person,” he said, somewhat sternly.

“Well, nobody here is,” said Rose. “Not where it counts, anyway.”

He looked up as he seemed to consider this.

“Nine billion,” he finally said.

Rose let out a long, low whistle. “That is the largest I’ve ever heard. What did you do? Destroy a planet?”

“Not a planet,” the man said, frowning. “Just the human race.” He looked Rose over a moment, as if suddenly realizing that she existed and took up (meta)physical space. “What about you?”

“Just one shy,” she said, smiling wistfully. “I really thought I had broken ten thousand, but it turns out one guy I left for dead didn’t bleed out completely.” She waved dismissively with her other hand. “Moral of the story: the hands-on approach is not worth it.”

“I suppose you could have used a blood thinner,” said “G”, conversationally. “Even a tiny amount of warfarin goes a long way.”

A genuine smile spread across Rose’s face. “Oh, rat poison! Now if only I’d thought of that when I was _alive_.”

In a few seconds, the next person in line was going to demand to see a manager, because she was dawdling and taking too long to get back to the register. But in the moments before that, before the ultimate showdown of bobbed hair vs. eye-wheel, Rose found herself asking:

“So, what are you doing later today?”

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [this tumblr post riffing on Lily Orchard's bizarre writing tips thread](https://lyanna.tumblr.com/post/635068373850619904/keeps-my-ocs-body-count-at-9999-innocent-lives). The original joke on a small friends-only Discord went something like:
>
>> broke: keeps body count at 9999 innocent lives to be able to exist in coffeeshop AU  
> woke: everyone 9999 and under is a barista, everyone 10000 and up is a customer
> 
> And that's how a meme turns into a story prompt, I guess!


End file.
